


What the covert yield

by JaqofSpades



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, what if Lilly was alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 05:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan Echolls drifts through a very different Neptune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the covert yield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NEStar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NEStar/gifts).



> Once again, my 'new follower ficlets' take on a life of their own. This one is for palis-delon, who is Naomi on the Investigating Mars podcast, a Veronica Mars newbie who requested a Veronica/Logan story set either preseries or in an A/U. I chose an AU in which Lilly and Duncan simply moved away.
> 
> Trigger warning: contains somewhat detailed scenes of sexual violence that may be triggering for some readers.

Sophomore year, everything changes.

Jake Kane goes to prison for tax evasion, and Kane Software crumbles, taking half of Neptune with it. Celeste sells the main house, and moves Lilly and Duncan out to Napa. There's the phone, of course, and email, and interesting new uses Jake never intended for streaming video, but it's not the same.

It's not that he doesn't love Lilly. He's just not good at distance, and abstinence, and parties where everyone knows his girlfriend isn't around. They break up twice in two months, and then limp along for a third. By the summer, he's single. He plays video games, surfs, and picks up girls who are happy just to get off. He tries not to be lonely.

“It's quiet around here, without Duncan and Lilly and Veronica,” his dad says one day. It's the first civil discussion they've had in months, so he actually answers the man. And that leads to thinking about it.

About Veronica.

He had thought they were friends, but after the Kanes left, she just drifts away. Perhaps Lilly and Duncan had been the twin suns keeping her in his orbit, and all the things he thought he and Veronica shared – a love of convoluted plots, an obsession with strategy games, the mutual passion for 70s road movies – had never actually meant anything to her.

She is still Duncan's, apparently. When he tracks her down in those last few days before summer, he gets that glowing smile that makes him shift on his feet and look away. Of course they're still together. Why wouldn't they be, it asks, and he feels stupid for thinking that a little thing like distance could come between Duncan and Veronica.

They never were like him and Lilly. They were the real deal, sweet and honest and true, and he and Lilly were just the hangers on, pushing and poking at the golden couple while envy ate away at them like a black stain. They used to tease them about how blue Duncan's balls must be, and how rusty Veronica's chastity belt was going to get before she handed over the key – and that's just what they said in public.

In private, Lilly suggested things that made him wonder who had corrupted her, and how she had managed to hide it for so long. “I want to be Veronica,” she would say, and “hold me down”. It wasn't the first time, or the last, that he wondered at Lilly's darkness. He feels so stupid now.

Veronica shines so bright that sometimes it blinds him to the fact that she hasn't stepped out of a fairytale. It's only when she starts to dim that he realises something is wrong. Her long blonde hair still falls in a perfect curtain to her ass, and her heart-shaped face still shines with sweetness, but there is shadow he's never seen before in those blue-green eyes. And one day, he realises he hasn't heard her laugh in weeks.

He starts to hear rumours. Punches out John Embom personally when he catches him repeating them. Without a Kane either side of her, Veronica is a target in a way she's never been before. And when she stops coming to top table, the gossip flies in earnest.

Duncan has dumped her. Her mom is turning up drunk at bars all over town. Veronica's Dad will probably lose the next election, and they'd have to leave town.

She's going to abandon him.

He starts to avoid her. Walks in the other direction when she crosses his path. Moves lockers, so he doesn't have to see her being jostled and shoved in the hall. Stops going to parties, even though he's heard she's not welcome in the 09 anymore.

Summer comes, and Italy isn't nearly as much fun as it should be. His father backhands him on their last night in Florence, and he ends up in hospital having his eyebrow stitched back together. He flies back to the States the next day – Cannes is fucking overrated – and thinks maybe he'll hook up with Lil for old times sake.

She's too busy getting set up for senior year at some fancy boarding school on the East Coast, but she still finds the time to quiz him about Veronica.

“Hey, how's Ronica doing? We ran into Shelley Pomeroy down in Boca, and she was all over Donut, even when he made it clear he was not into her. So Shelley says something about Veronica moving on with half the football team, which is, you know, so NOT Veronica,” Lilly rambled.

He draws breath to tell her he hasn't seen Veronica in weeks, but Lilly rattles on, oblivious.

“I dropped by her house when we were down there last month for some luncheon Celeste needed to go to, but apparently they don't even live there any more! And when I went to the Sheriff's office, she was getting into her car and straight out ignored me. But Logan – she's cut off all her hair! And that outfit. Someone needs to tell her grunge is not a look she can pull off!”

Concern twists in his belly, but he pushes it away. Veronica Mars, fairytale princess, he reminds himself. But he knows better than to say no to Lilly, and if it takes checking up on Veronica to shut her up, he'll do it.

“Yes, I'll call her! Jesus, Lilly, I'll track her down if it makes you happy. Conduct a fashion intervention – she's probably just missing you, Lil. Not like you didn't used to choose all her clothes,” he reminds his steamroller ex.

“True. But still – be a good ex-boyfriend,” Lilly chirps. “Besides … it's not like you ever needed an excuse to hang with Veronica before,” she says, voice sly and knowing. 

He freezes. It wasn't like that. They were friends.

Yeah, and he jerks off to the sound of Dick's phone messages all the time. And has a stack of photos of Donut that he keeps in his bedside drawer. She's just like all his other friends.

Except, you know, not around.

And while he can forgive Lil and Donut for taking off, she's still fucking here. He thinks about calling her, but that feels too much like forgiveness. Maybe he'll hunt her down tomorrow, he tells himself, but he sinks deep into his womb of porn and pot, and then summer's over. 

*

First day of school, and there's a kid on the flagpole already. There's only two groups of people who have the right to do that at Neptune High, and the badly-spelled 'snich' on the black kid's chest suggests this is the domain of the PCHers. Logan knows Dick can't spell either, but he would have heard about it if the 09ers decided to string someone up. Maybe. He thinks.

Some riot-grrl wannabe pulls out a flick knife and starts to cut through the duct tape. Logan's feeling kind of bad about how hard he laughed and moves in to help when she looks up. Veronica's eyes are ringed with kohl and her hair is jagged, but that's not the biggest change. She's bristling with fury and contempt, spitting curses he'd never expected to hear from that sweet mouth.

“Laugh some more, Echolls! Then either help me out here or get the fuck out my way,” she growls, and he goggles for a moment, then scrubs at his hair and mutters something about not needing the beaners on his back. 

Colossally stupid, he'll realise later. The kid on the flagpole becomes her new best friend, and him? He's the jackass that laughed aloud, or is it the coward that backed away? No matter. She's not forgiving him for either. And he doesn't do well with guilt.

It's her own fault, really, for moulding herself into such an excellent target. The little skirts that show off her muscled legs, the makeup, the fuck you demeanour – he just wants her to react, and react she does. “Know it all,” and “do gooder,” he sneers, but she barely rolls her eyes at those, so he lifts his game. “So sexy!” and “you hot tramp,” and “trashy.”

“You flirt,” she trills, and stomps off, so he remembers all the little moments, all the secret intimacies between friends. Mama's a lush, and runs around on Daddy.

Yep, that works fine. The lurch from friends to enemies is so dizzying he wonders if its possible to get emotional whiplash. He knows what pain looks like, now, and it's like he's addicted, prodding and poking and torturing the girl for even the merest glimmer of emotional response. 

Somebody has to respond, after all. They can't all be like his mother, numbing herself with quart after quart of vodka. Or his father, who has just two modes – sex and violence. Or him. They can't all be like him, Logan thinks viciously as he nurses his sprained wrist.

“Let's barbecue!” Aaron had said. “Bring your friends – I haven't seen Veronica in months,” he smiled, obviously warming to his Cosby Dad role. “What's she up to, anyway? Such a sweet, pure girl.”

“Yeah, not so much,” Logan had snorted, and his Dad's backhand had knocked him out of his chair. The bastard had stood on his wrist as he cowered on the floor, demanding he take it back.

“She's not even here!” Logan had protested, but Aaron must have had his white knight hat on.

“No son of mine is going to sully a girl's name like that,” he roared, and Logan had to hand it to him.

Pretty damn convincing, old Dad. Some of his best acting in years.

*

Logan is telling the journalism teacher about Bodie Chang's bodacious carving, and doing his best to avoid the increasingly clingy Caitlin Ford, when Ms Dent looks up to find Veronica hovering in the door. Her smile drips sweetness for the teacher – and total disregard for Logan - as she hands over the slip of paper that apparently transfers her into journalism.

The guidance counsellor, he hears her say, and winces in recognition. Rebecca James has him in her sights too. But having to look at Veronica every day … it's going to kill him. If she doesn't kill him first.

She's showing Dent her camera, and yeah, her skills will raise the bar around here. Vaguely literate and a photographer to boot; Logan might have to step up himself. But then, her habit of sleeping in class might balance things out a bit – what's up with that, anyway? 

He's heard she's working with her Dad in this new PI business. But he can't believe Papa Mars would let his precious daughter take dirty pictures, or put herself in danger. He makes the mistake of telling her so, and she floors him with her snark.

“The poor have to eat, Logan. My dirty pictures help us pay the bills. You know - food, rent, gas for my car? Oh, that's right – you don't know, Mr never-had-a-job!”

Somehow, his princess has morphed into Veronica Mars, PI, queen of the badass stare and witty putdown. He wants to tell her how hot that is, but the hole he's dug for himself doesn't let him say it, so he settles for calling her a pervert, and working class trash. 

But he is, of course, Logan Echolls. Otherwise known as karma's most basic bitch. It's actually funny, he convinces himself, when she is assigned as his photographer for the Bodie Chang story. He's already running late to meet Bodie up at Gold Coast, and she's still in the parking lot, trying to change a flat with some new kid looking on.

“Love life on your own time, Mars,” he snaps. “We're late.”

She indicates the flat with a theatrical flourish, and he simply pushes open the passenger door to his X-terra. “No grubby pawprints on my upholstery, mind.”

Veronica glances at her watch before clenching her jaw and climbing up. She sits absolutely rigid in the passenger seat while he blasts out of the carpark. He spends the first ten minutes of the trip fiddling with the radio in the hope of finding something that might get her to relax. 

They've just gotten past monosyllabic answers and are roaring up the PCH when they have to slow down for roadworks, manned by the good souls from the juvenile detention facility. She gasps at the sight of Weevil Navarro, pretty in prison orange.

Her obvious concern scalds him, and makes him shoot off his mouth.

“What? He's a friend of yours now?” Logan asks, his voice unreasonably querulous even to his own ears.

Veronica's mouth drops open in disbelief as she swings around to confront him. “And that's your business how? You've made it very clear where you stand on the topic of my friends,” she sneers, and yes, just desserts. He's being thrashing the friend-of-my-enemy thing a lot lately, even if Wallace Fennel is one of the more agreeable kids at Neptune. Whatever.

But Weevil Navarro. Weevil, who never bothered to hide his lust for Lilly. Weevil, who Lilly used to watch, and bite her lip. Weevil, who'd answered her phone once, and just laughed when Logan demanded to know where Lilly was.

Weevil, who's been taking Veronica out riding on his bike, if you listen to Carrie Bishop. He'd dismissed it at the time, figuring it was just another bogus story, but now, he wonders if it could be true. He wonders if badass Veronica has gone looking for someone with a little more flavour than good old Donut.

He wonders if he has missed his chance to find out.

*

It's a case, of course. She springs short and tattooed from the lockup, and he and boys get to kick around the real evil-doer before he's taken off to wherever natural-born crims end up. Logan even thanks her, for getting Caitlin Ford off his back. 

“Didn't do it for you,” she says shortly, and stalks away.

Her words are still ringing in his head a few weeks later when the pot from his monthly poker game goes walkabout. He suspected Weevil at first – that's what he gets for inviting the local hoodlum uptown – but the he realises he'd been watching the gang leader the whole time. Everyone had.

“Looks like a case for Veronica Mars,” Logan trills, and while the others look vaguely pissed, Weevil just smirks.

“Better go ask Daddy for some cash, rich boy. You're gonna need it to afford my girl V,” he hoots, and stomps out to the Weevil-mobile. The roar of the hog drowns out Logan's frantic mental scrabbling – his girl V? What did he mean by HIS girl? - and breaks the inertia of the group, each of the players jumping to assure him that they didn't need the money.

He tells them he'll leave that up to Veronica to find out. He still has her number on speed dial, he realises. It feels momentous, being able to call her again.

“It's after eleven on a school night, Echolls. This better be good,” she snarls, and he explains what's happened. “Where are you?” she wants to know.

“The poolhouse,” he says, surprised. It's been his adult-free domain for so long, he's astonished she has to ask. The four of them practically lived down here last year, before Lilly and Donut went away. Before everything changed.

“Have you searched the place properly? I can't … come over right now. Dad would have a fit,” she rushes.

There's something in her voice he can't quite place. He gets that doing a job for him might be weird, especially with all the shit he gave her earlier in the year. But one flash of green should overcome all of that. But the weird thing is … he doesn't think it's the job worrying her.

She just didn't want to see you, his conscience reminds him.

Definitely a possibility. But still … he doesn't think that's all it is. Huh. 

*

Veronica's idea is to replay the game, and she'll re-enact the crime as it unfolds. He agrees easily enough, but probably not for the reasons she expects. He's got no doubt she knows who the thief is, but what he really wants is to see her up close with Weevil.

Which is … interesting. She's uncomfortable here, for some reason, but he stands behind her and she seems to draw support from that. Anyone else, and he'd think they were together, but he knows Veronica. He's seen her all misty-eyed and romantic, and that's not what's going on here. She's easy with Weevil, relaxed. Logan had that with her, once, and threw it away.

Karma's bitch, like he said.

She unravels the con with impressive showmanship, and even presents the stolen money with a flourish worthy of a professional magician. Weevil grins and hoots, and Connor Larkin stands up to applaud.

Logan thanks her, and offers her a bonus on top of their agreed fee.

“Why? I just did my job, Logan. My standard fee is enough.”

“Hardship rates, you know. Having to deal with the rich and powerful. Horrible working conditions like that.”

She shudders imperceptibly and glances behind him, to where Weevil and Larkin are sitting on the end of the bed, launching into another round of Mortal Kombat.

“You can say that again,” she says faintly and turns away. “Can we do this somewhere else?”

“Watched one too many GTA marathons? Or – own up Veronica. Are you remembering the weekend you two made us watch all seven seasons of Boy Meets World down here?”

She's been all business, sure, but he's expecting a laugh out of that. She doesn't even smile, and even though she turns he head away, he still catches the glimmer of tears on her face.

“Veronica? Jesus, Veronica – what's wrong?”

She refuses to answer, simply takes her money and leaves. After he throws the others out, he returns to the pool house to flop dejectedly on the bed, and wonder what the fuck just happened.

It's the same view of the ceiling he's stared at for years. Maybe the light's different, this time of night. Maybe it was hidden before. Maybe it wasn't always there.

But there's definitely a camera up there right now, it's little eye winking at him coldly. He goes cold with fear. How did she know? Why didn't she say something?

And who the fuck is focusing hidden cameras on the bed in the pool house anyway?

The answer is depressingly easy. 

*

Good old Dad is in Grenada making a big deposit in his fuck you money, so he's got the time to search his office from top to bottom. Not that he needed it. The tapes are filed on his bookcase, in full view.

Twisting by the pool, he's called them. Volumes 1-22.

Logan nearly sits down right there to watch them, but the chance of his Mom coming looking for him is too high. He takes them back to the pool house, and slips them into the dvd-player there. Most recent first, he figures.

Lilly flounces into the room, bounces on the bed, making big eyes at the camera. Relief flows over him – Lil, somehow, found it, and told Veronica. That's all.

But then Aaron moves into the frame.

Logan can't believe his eyes as his father wrestles Lilly to the bed and starts to yank at her clothes. When Lilly begins to yowl, the cat-in-heat noise is familiar enough that he knows what's coming next. He used to say no, when she begged for that.

His father doesn't. He turns her over, doesn't even lube her up. “Tell me to stop, you horny little bitch. Tell me.”

Lilly just begs for more.

Logan's stomach starts to churn, and he stumbles for the bathroom, barely making it before his horror and disgust comes gushing out. The screen is mercifully black when he emerges. Then it flickers again.

It's Veronica.

Veronica walking into the room ahead of his father, laughing and smiling, a math book – his math book, he realises – in her hand. She's in her summer uniform of denim cutoffs and a little t-shirt, and Aaron watches her tight little ass all the way across the room. He glances up at the camera, lust roiling in his eyes, and Logan's heart seizes in terror.

It's Veronica, caught by a vicious shove, falling backwards onto the bed. Her cries, bouncing around like marbles in the soundproofed room. The slap that leaves her mouth bloody.

Veronica, begging his father not to. “Please. Please don't, Mr Echolls. Please.”

The bastard's grin of triumph, and the way he shoves her knees apart. Thanks her for keeping her virginity for a real man, not one of those callow boys. “They don't deserve a good girl like you,” the monster tells her earnestly. “Lay back now. This'll hurt.”

He lunges for the off button, unable to watch. He knows what happened. It was written all over Veronica's face this afternoon. He stumbles out into the cloying California night, the stench of Aaron's cigar drifting across the water from the far side of the pool.

He follows that toxic trail back to it's source, stopping to pick up the heavy ashtray from a setting halfway along.

“Logan?” his father asks, but there's no need for accusations, or any sort of explanation. Logan just breathes her name, and swings. 

Later, he'll say that he didn't know what he was doing. He'll lie, and think of his father's blood running into the swimming pool. It's the one memory he has that makes him smile.

_fin_

 

Disclaimer: This fanfiction was written for personal enjoyment rather than profit. No infringement on the rights of the intellectual property owners is intended.


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